FUNERAL of THOMAS PICK of HOBY, 1909

Hoby Church ... and ... The School, Hoby

The village was in Leicestershire, a mere handful of houses huddled together on the brow of the hill. A church spire lifted itself high above the houses and the trees, below the Wreake ran slowly through the fair meadows and the sleek cattle stood knee deep in the luscious pasture. Like the Old City of God, it was "beautiful for situation". June was at its best, all bird life was at its busiest, and flooded hill and dale with its mellow music. The valley was throbbing with joyous life, life at its best; it seemed brimming over with life.

There was only one place cast a shadow. Near the old church was a grave, and a darkened silent house. The village schoolmaster was dead, dead amid all the life around. He had gone from that quiet paradise to the rush and crush of London, and amid its babel of noise, he died.

I saw his home, the roses he had planted were racing up the front, peeping in the very bedroom windows making a charming picture in crimson, yellow and green. And there was his garden, bearing masks of his skill; he had sown, he had planted, but alas, another must reap.

I saw the sad procession start from the house; there was no simulated grief there. The widow had found out ere this that "Out of this world of dross, death had taken her piece of gold". The children, mostly grown up, were conscious now that the old home to which their hearts had turned in the stress and sorrow of their lives, could never be the same place again to them. The distance to walk was only a matter of yards. No sound broke the stillness, but the solemn note of the bell in the Tower.

Outside the gate, his schoolchildren stood very quiet today, very reverent, looking wistfully at the passing mourners, the poorest of them with some little mask of mourning, and all of them carrying some simple old world garden flower in their hands. A touching picture which made ones eyes grow misty.

The service in the church was such as the reader has seen in many a country village church. The Rector slowly reading out the opening sentence of comfort and hope. Then the old psalm with its picture of life and death, then the sublime arguments of St Paul, surely the last word ever needed to assure us of our immortality and Christ's final triumph over death, then a single hymn from the old hymnal, sung as men sing when their hearts are full and their voices thick and hoarse. I listened for the voices of the children, but they were nearly all dumb today, and every eye was on the flower covered coffin. How many times had he seen a scene like this? Did he see this? Who dare say he does not? More than once he brought his own dead here.

It is soon over. The Dead March wails from the organ as we slowly walk the last few yards to the grave, they lower him reverently down for his last long unbroken sleep on that mouldy bed, the like of which waits for us somewhere. The mourners take a last look. The simple village people file slowly past. The children cast in their simple flowers, and as we turn away we hear a woman say "There! That's the last of him"

The last of him? Nay, Nay! my good woman, not the last of him. Look over those holly bushes; there is a red brick building that is the old schoolroom. There, many a homely lesson he gave, and many a man and woman will thank God for the words are keeping many a man straight, many a woman pure in the Word today. "The last of him?" No my good woman. Is the farmer's work done when he has cast his seed in the ground? The Schoolmaster's work is still going on.

HOBY June 1909